The Dying Hour (23 page)

Excerpt from
Reflections on the Ritual

In the year of Our Lord,
A.D.
1557 Somewhere in Europe

At dusk, after much of the crowd had departed, the grief-sick mother, her blind child in tow, sifted through the warm feathery ashes collecting what remained of her daughters.

She yelled incoherently, cursing, in a futile attempt to chase off the vulturous relic hunters, who were filling their pockets with bits of charred bone. The scavengers would later emerge at the local tavern, eyes aglow as they recounted the event and solicited offers for their recovered booty. “And what am I offered for a witch’s tooth, eh?”

For her part, the mother tenderly gathered all she could find in her apron, tying it into a small sack. When she finished, she held it in her arms as though it where a tiny warm infant.

Watching the scene from a balcony was a somber man who had paused from his work. For a brief moment the mother looked up to him. He may have been a visiting academic, or a theologian sent to record today’s undertaking.

Something troubled him as he observed the heartbroken mother’s journey from the square carrying the sack of her daughters’ charred remains, the blind girl gripping her skirt. Their rummaging drew him deeper into his thoughts, disturbing him until the pair vanished from view.

Night had descended when the mother and her child came to a church some distance from the city’s northern edge. They approached a statue of the Holy Mother and prayed at her feet. Then they entered the churchyard and the cemetery where the mother scattered the ashes of her children on consecrated ground. Her face was a tapestry of tearstreaked soot as she lifted it to a three-quarter moon and asked God to watch over her dead daughters.

The woman and her child set out for the long, sorrowful walk to their shack of a cottage, several miles away, unaware that a stranger was following them.

Submerged in her grief, the mother heard nothing of the sounds behind them as she and her child entered the same dense forest where her daughters had bathed.

The stranger came upon them in the moonlight, calling an insult to the woman, compelling her to turn and look up to a solitary dark figure on a horse.

At first, she took him for a wealthy relic-hunter, which angered her.

“What do you want?” She held out her empty apron, charcoal lined with the ashes of her daughters. “I have nothing. They’ve taken my heart. Have you come for that, too, you cowardly bandit?”

The stranger’s mare snorted with spite as he moved it closer, raised his arm, and struck the woman with a single, powerful blow that rendered her unconscious before she hit the ground.

A dream.

Yes, all a horrible dream.

Those were the woman’s first thoughts when she awakened, that the executions had been a nightmare. But when her eyes adjusted, she could not find her two oldest daughters.

And the fire blazing before her was real. She could feel its heat. No. She was confused, she was dreaming, it was a nightmare. She called out for her daughters, set out to find them, but was paralyzed, bound to a tree in the woods.

Through the flames she met the wide white eyes of her baby.

Her blind child.

Lashed to a tree.

Displayed before the fire was the same array of odd-looking metal instruments belonging to the man who’d burned her daughters at the stake.

Then a large black figure emerged from behind the woman, his face hidden by the executioner’s black hood.

“I saw you attempt to invoke demons in the churchyard with the ashes of your heretic off-spring.”

He pointed a black-gloved hand at her only living child.

“She is a sorceress.”

He reached down for what appeared to be a surgeon’s bone saw used for amputation. He examined its polished blade, then showed it to the mother.

“God’s work is incomplete,” he said, then approached the blind girl. “This girl is the devil’s gangrenous limb and you are the whore-mother of witches.”

Feeling his touch, the girl struggled against her bindings as the fire crackled and he calculated where to make his first cut.

In all the years since the difficult birth of her third child, the young mother had begun each day begging God to end her daughter’s silence and allow her one small miracle.

The joy of hearing her voice.

A sound, a whisper.

Anything.

It was a prayer unanswered until this final moment.

For before she died that night, the blind girl’s agony was so great, it overcame her defect.

Her screams were the first and last sounds her anguished mother heard from her as Xavier Veenza, instrument of God’s wrath, completed his work.

A
soft creaking woke Jason in the morning.

Someone was in his apartment!

He lay in bed listening. His forged steel bike lock was looped around the spindle of his headboard. His phone was within reach. A shadow floated along the wall beyond his door. Jason got up quietly and crept down the hall, his skull throbbing from his hangover. A man was sitting in his swivel rocker reading his files. Jason approached, the lock in a white-knuckled grip, then he froze.

“Dad?”

His father turned to him. “Hello, Jay.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, your note said you needed to see me, the door was unlocked. You OK?”

Jason exhaled, waited a moment.

“I’ve been better.” He opened a cupboard above the sink.

“I know. It’s in all the papers, all over TV and radio.”

Jason twisted the cap off an aspirin bottle, tapped out three tablets, swallowed them with a large glass of water. He sat on his sofa, massaging his head. He saw the plastic trash bag filled with empty beer cans. His old man had started dealing with the disaster.

A long silence passed as he looked at his father.

“Dad, I know I haven’t been around much lately. I know I promised to go with you to meetings, but with this story and all.”

“I’ve gone to meetings already.”

Jason stopped rubbing his head.

“I’m the one who should apologize. Embarrassing you the way I did. I see it’s in some of the reports. I’m sorry for that night at the
Mirror
and all the others before it.”

“Forget it.”

His father took stock of him.

“Son, it’s safe to say I’ve learned my facts the hard way. Life isn’t fair and there’s no point complaining, no point trying to drown your mistakes. Your mother’s never coming back, I accept that now, just as you have.”

Just as he’d accepted that Valerie wasn’t coming back. Just as he’d accepted that the Wade men were cursed to lose every good thing in their lives.

“You need to understand that I’m proud of you, Son.”

“Proud? I’m a disgrace. A fuckup. It’s in the papers.”

“They’re wrong.”

“You’re biased. I’m not a reporter. Never will be. My place is beside you in the brewery.
I accept that now.
”

“Bull. The brewery’s not the answer for you. There was a time I thought it was, but I was selfish. I wanted you next to me because your mother was gone. And this crap”—he kicked the bag of empty cans—“isn’t the answer either.”

“What’s the answer? Tell me.”

“Do what you were born to do. Ever since you started at the
Mirror,
I’ve read your stories. You’re good. I was a cop once, but that dream died before it even got started, a lifetime ago. I’m no detective, no journalist, but for what it’s worth, I’ve read everything you wrote about this Cull and I don’t see where you went wrong.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Maybe so, but the way I read things it sounds very political, right?”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Because of me some editors got hurt in this too. Good people I respect. They checked my work, gave it a green light. I don’t know what happened.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t give up.”

“They fired me.”

“Prove them wrong. Rise above it. Get mad. Follow this through to the end. Nobody knows this story like you. Freelance it some place like the
New York Times,
or one of the magazines here.”

“Dad.”

“I’m serious, you can’t quit now. While you were sleeping I read your research. I think you’re on to something. I think you just haven’t put all the pieces of this puzzle together.”

Jason gripped his old man’s shoulders warmly.

“I love you for coming to see me. It helps. A lot. And I’m so glad you’re going to your meetings, getting better. But I’ve got to sort this out my way. I need to be alone to think. I’ll come see you in a couple of days, OK? And I’ll go to a meeting with you. Promise.”

In the shower, Jason considered his father’s words. As steam clouds rose around him, his fear gave way to anger. He had to pull out of this.

He wasn’t wrong.

His mind swirled, pulling him back to what Nestor had said. “
You blew us away with what you’d dug up on your own…I swear my gut tells me you’re not wrong. The facts are there.
” And Pitman, the Benton County coroner.
“You strike me as a smart journalistic investigator who knows if he’s on the right track.”

On the right track.

Whatever happened to Karen Harding, Gideon Cull had to be linked to it. Somehow, in some way he was connected, Jason swore. Forget Cull’s halo.

Monsters wore masks.

Jason studied what he knew for the umpteenth time.

Then he made scrambled eggs and a pot of strong coffee. After eating he felt better. His concentration sharpened, he scrutinized his computer and hard-copy data. Every note, every file, every picture, three, four, five, six, a dozen times, refusing to let up.

Damn it.

The key was here.

He spotted something in the plastic trash bag next to the kitchen sink and fished it out. A note stuck to the bottom of a beer can. Something he’d made last night when he was drunk. He squinted at his scrawl. Sawridge scene inventory and Larssen’s farm,
BMK.

BMK?

Bookmark.

He shuffled through his papers until the creased bookmark from Larssen’s place fell out. He stared at it, at the only two words he could read, “Twist” and “Books.”

He drew a blank.

Then he went to his notes cribbed from Hank Stralla’s evidence list. He went over every item as if they were pieces of a puzzle. Soda cans, beer cans, candy wrappers, newspapers, placemat map of B.C. from Ida May’s Restaurant.

He stopped at that one.

Pondering it, he looked at the bookmark.

He went online and did an advanced search for Ida May’s Restaurant in British Columbia. He got a hit for Ida May’s Restaurant.
In Garrison, British Columbia.

Nothing special.

Dead end.

He searched community and tourism sites for Garrison, scrolled quickly through a few pages, entries blurred by—wait! What was that? Two words leapt from the screen “Twist” and “Books.”

TWIST OF FATE

Rare Occult & Religious Books Garrison, British Columbia.

Sweet Jesus.

Garrison, British Columbia.

There was a picture of the store on the community page. It had a sign above the front window. The words matched. The type and font matched the two words on the bookmark he had found at Roxanne Palmer’s murder scene.

The Garrison placemat was found at Karen Harding’s scene.

Was Garrison the link?

His mind galloped.

A
ritualistic
killing, Hanna Larssen had told him.

He tapped the bookmark in his palm.

Ritualistic. Ritual. Books.

Come on.
It was coming. Another piece was surfacing now. The Benton County coroner was studying old books. Part of his homework, he had said. Yes, that was right. Jason had written down the titles. He found his notes. Flipped through the pages.
Here we go.

One leaped from the page.

Reflections on the Ritual.

Jason looked at the title, repeating it to himself. Yes, it was familiar. He pulled up a college Web photo of Gideon Cull in his office posted online by the college and charities. Books filled the shelves behind him. Jason recalled seeing something.
Reflections.
He enlarged the picture, zooming beyond Cull’s face to the books behind him, locking on to one. Bingo.

Reflections on the Ritual.

Ritualistic killing.
Reflections on the Ritual.

He read the bookstore’s telephone number on the card. Cautioning himself to be careful, he dialed it from his cell phone, activating the feature that blocked his number. It rang three times before a soft-spoken man said, “Twist of Fate.”

“Hello, I’m calling to track down an old book and was wondering if you might have it.”

“What’s the title?”

“Reflections on the Ritual.”

“One moment.”

A silent pause. Then Jason heard a keyboard.

“Just checking for you. It’s a dark book. But enlightening.”

More keyboard work and a long sigh of exasperation.

“Computer’s slow today.”

“Do you think you have it?”

“Not certain. But as I recall we’ve sold it over the last while. Wow, this thing is slow today. You do know the subject matter of this book?”

“Not entirely.”

“It was produced in the late 1800s, inspired by the diary of a sixteenth-century torturer. He was a deranged monk who carried out the penalty on heretics, witches. Mostly women. He strived to perfect his methods.”

Jason said nothing.

“Here we go. Oh. Bad luck. Don’t have it. Sorry.”

“Where did your last copy go?”

“One moment. A gentleman in Washington State.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. Store policy. But if you agree to a small commission in the event of a sale, I could relay an inquiry of interest to the purchaser for you.”

“Not right now. This is an anonymous query. Thanks,” Jason said.

“Okeydoke. But if you change your mind, it would be easy in this case.”

“Why’s that?”

“The chap who bought it also bought a second copy and sent it to Washington. That customer is local, just outside Garrison.”